header-photo

Sunday, May 25, 2008

A day trip

This morning we decided to take a little trip outside the city. Actually we decided to visit another city altogether. We decided to take a trip to Safranbolu. On our way out of town we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for a little pre-trip sugar high. Nothing like a donut to start the day off right!

Brian estimated our driving time to be about 2 hours. After about an hour and a half we came to a toll booth.


As we were pulling up a car was backing out of the drive-on-through-because-you-have-an-automatic-pay-thingy-on-your-windshield lane and entering the cash-only lane. We were nice and stayed back so that he could pull on in ahead of us. He pulled into the lane and was a good 10 feet away from the pay booth. We kinda giggled thinking that this poor guy must be from the village or something. He seemed to have no idea what to do. We thought he was about to get out of his car and walk up to the booth to pay. Nope. When he realized he needed to be closer to the booth to pay he put his car in reverse and guess what...


This happened. Yes, that is our white van. We were still quite a ways behind him when he decided to back up, but he never looked back and plowed into us.


He managed to break his tail light, mess up our tampon (Turkish for bumper!), and break off our license plate.


While Brian wrote down the man's insurance info one of the toll booth employees talked to the village man and his wife. (We were right...they were from the village and didn't really know what they were doing.)


After exchanging info we followed the village man to the police station to fill out a report. The kids and I sat in the car while Brian went in and took care of business. One hour later we went into the police station to use the bathroom. Brian was finishing up and we were given a police excort to this place...


for lunch. This was in the little town of Gerede. I ate the worst lentil soup I have ever eaten, and Brian said his Beyti wasn't so great either. After lunch we walked up the street just to say we had been somewhere.


So I took this picture of the town...


and a picture of a cobbled road...


and this door...


which led to this house.

Then we turned around and came home.

Instead of taking pictures of

the town of Safranbolu...


which has these old Ottoman style houses


and old street markets myself I found these pictures on the internet to share with you.

The end.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a bummer!

Is everyone OK?

LiteralDan said...

Your impromptu trips sound like ours-- you have my sympathies!

Anonymous said...

Was this dated "Sunday"? You know where you were supposed to be this morning!

Mom

Anonymous said...

Love mom's comment:) Sounds like an exciting adventure came out of a boring old day trip!
Cheri

Anonymous said...

What a bummer! I hope your tampon makes it out alright.

Anonymous said...

Well at least it was a pretty town!!



Peace #2

Brittany said...

Sorry, can't really get passed the fact that tampon is turkish for bumper....because that is how mature I am:)

Natalie said...

charlie girl - yeah...it was. but we are all perfectly ok.

literaldan - we may not have gotten where we were going, but at least we got somewhere!

mom - we know. we brought a bible with us...does that count?

cheri - well it was a big adventure...exactly what i said when we got home.

andrea - the van is in the shop as we speak getting the tampon fixed.

gaining - i almost took a picture of three girl laughing at me for taking picture as i walked down the street. not really a touristy town...they might not have seen many foreigners!

brittany - yeah...i am the same way. it's not often i get to use the turkish word tampon so i jumped at the chance!

annie said...

I love the architecture and OMG, tampon? Really? So...what is the feminine hygiene product called, then?

HeyJoe said...

"Actually we decided to visit another city altogether>"

Actually we decided to visit another city.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I'm totally behind on your blog so I'm now playing catch-up. Or is it Catsup in turkey?

Natalie said...

annie - yes...i know. the buildings here are really interesting. the female hygiene product is called ob...mostly because that is the only brand they have. and they aren't used much here. tampons that is.

heyjoe - are you correcting my grammar and word usage? wow. i'm sure if you read back over all my posts you could have a heyday with that! and it's ketcap in turkey...with the c sounding like ch.

HeyJoe said...

Natalie - Actually I was quoting the movie "Airplane!" If you have not seen it, check it out. Oh, and Hot Rod! :)

Natalie said...

heyjoe - i've seen airplane, but it's been years! i guess i have some movie watching to do!

Heather said...

that SO would happen to me.

here's to making the best out of the trip anyway!

and i'm still laughing at your dented tampon....

Natalie said...

thewishfulwriter - well i wish you were hear to share in the experience. i'm sure it would have made it much more exciting! you could have laughed at the dented tampon with us! the kids didn't think it was nearly as funny as we did.